Loyle Carner “Loose Ends”
This young hip hop artist is a true poet, I just love his voice his lyrics and his ethics – he lives with ADHD and helps kids through cookery, hats off to him, he is only 27 years old, a very impressive man, have a listen (lyrics contain the F-bomb just in case you are having a kitchen disco with your little ones…)
Olafur Arnolds and Nils Frahm featuring Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir “Particles”
Just a sublime song, very haunting, usually makes me teary…..enjoy
Jamilla Woods “Giovanni”
This young woman impresses me so much, again, so young (at least to me!) at 34 years old. This beautiful song was inspired by the poem “Ego Tripping” by Nikki Giiovanni , you can read it here https://poets.org/poem/ego-tripping-there-may-be-reason-why
Jamilla’s mission is described as “to champion forgotten voices in black art by building on the legacies they left behind. Woods is not just a poet, musician or youth worker but a beacon for self-empowerment” read the article here https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/may/08/jamila-woods-i-want-to-pass-down-the-power-to-speak-on-how-you-should-be-treated
(lyrics contain the F-bomb just in case you are having a kitchen disco with your little ones…)
It is very normal to have difficulty getting to sleep or staying asleep when you feel anxious. It is also very normal to react to problems sleeping with anxiety. You have a bad night, and added to the tiredness you feel, you are now worried about how well you will cope with the demands of the day. If your schedule involves an important meeting, an exam, a deadline, a long drive, the demands of a young family, then the anxiety ramps up even more. That first night of poor sleep may have had an obvious cause, like a car with a noisy exhaust going past your house, a twinge of back pain, or a worry. Ordinarily your body will return to its usual sleep pattern as soon as it is able to, but often the next night is affected by the anxiety about whether or not you will have a good night. This sleep/panic cycle gets activated very easily and can lead to long term sleep deprivation. Our bodies are designed for sleep to come effortlessly but sleep is an involuntary process – we cannot FORCE ourselves to sleep any more than we can choose to stop breathing. So taking a combative or hostile stance to sleep problems is unlikely to work. (Think of it like trying to get a closer look at a beautiful butterfly: running around the garden with a net just makes them fly away, but if you sit quietly near the flowers, one might just settle nearby). A short period of insomnia usually corrects itself fairly quickly but if you have suffered from unrestful sleep for many years you will need to call deeply on your patience whilst you work out how to dismantle the sleep/panic cycle and what you may find beneath it. Your difficulties sleeping are being perpetuated by your mind, and this is where the Yoga Tradition and its sister discipline Ayurvedic Medicine may be able to help.
Gut reaction
Ayurveda, the healing science, works on the premise that the origin of all disease lies in your digestion, and they are not talking just about food. Digestion is seen in terms of physical, mental, and emotional – the process of extracting what is helpful and eliminating what is indigestible. Mental indigestion is the inability to let go of a certain incident or thought usually one associated with an unpleasant experience. Emotional indigestion is the recurrence of a feeling, often sadness or anger, long after the event itself has passed: the emotion has not been sufficiently ‘digested’ and remains in our subconscious, from which it can surface unexpectedly at any moment. In Ayurveda it is understood that mental and emotional indigestion are the most common causes of insomnia and the grinding of teeth in sleep is seen as an attempt to chew and digest recurring thoughts and emotions. Anxiety, worry, depression, unpleasant memories, and fears are common cause of sleeplessness, and these are all “in your mind” rather than being something external and tangible. If the problem is coming from the mind then the remedy is located in the same place. The solution is to allow the mind to stop clinging to unserttling thoughts and emotions and to come to rest. So how on earth do we do this?
Witness protection
Yoga philosophy teaches us about a profound serenity that exists underneath the turmoil of the mind and suggests that what stops us accessing this peaceful territory is our ego. In yoga the ego is explained as that part of the psyche that seeks to compare, to judge and to catastrophise. When you cannot sleep, the ego unleashes all of the drama connected with what MIGHT happen the next day, none of which is helpful. The physical practice of yoga when approached without force or comparison or unkindness helps you ‘efface’ the ego (move it out of the way). Through a combination of physical posture work, breath awareness and relaxation you learn how to connect to the calm witness within you that can observe without judgment. This ‘witnessing awareness’ is there whether you are awake or asleep. The witness can watch the ego trying to control everything, then freaking out because it can’t, then collapsing in a sobbing heap with frustration, a cycle that it thrashes through again and again while you lie in helpless wakeful tiredness in your bed. When you can move from worrier to witness, suddenly you have a choice. What will you do with this time? Now this may seem like the most ludicrous question you have ever heard! But -you are awake, so what ARE you going to do with this time? Moments of quiet are rare, and they serve a purpose. In these unwelcome wakeful moments you may begin to gain some insight into why you can’t sleep. If your sleep is being interrupted regularly, it may be trying to convey a message and this might be physical, psychological or spiritual in nature. The physical messages are the easiest to interpret: a full bladder or an aching back can easily be remedied by a trip to the loo and a shift in position. Psychological and spiritual issues are thornier – a signal that you need to prioritise time to process your feelings and experiences. For many people, the moment they settle into bed, despite feeling physically and mentally exhausted with heavy eyelids, their mind starts churning, and there is so much activity going on that they cannot get to sleep. If you can, in that moment, stop, take a breath, and step away from your panic about being awake, so that you can take the vantage point of the witness. I think of my inner witness like an umpire at a tennis match: impartial and watching everything. It gives you that little bit of space to WITNESS the churning of the mind without getting swept away by it. Remember, yoga is about a lot more than than having a flexible body, in fact I would go as far as to say the physical aspect is the LEAST important part of this ancient discipline (and the most modern component of it, but that’s a story for another day…) What yoga is teaching us, is to become aware of ourselves as a multi-dimensional and inter-connected being. We are learning to inhabit the present moment and to move away from the need to edit anything out, or add anything in.
The twilight zone
At the end of a yoga class you are invited to lie on the floor to do nothing and this is called Savasana (pronounced sha-VAA-su-na) meaning ‘pose of a corpse’. The translation gives you a clue. It is about being still and doing nothing. The teacher may take you through a guided relaxation or play soothing music, or this last past of the class takes place in silence. Some students look forward to this bit the most, and their eyes will be sliding round to the clock to see if it’s time to get their blanket out. Others dread this bit and will either lie there with arms folded, ankles crossed, body tense, counting the seconds til they can escape, and the real hard-core savasana-averse make an excuse and leave before it starts. After an hour or more of posture work when you have been twisting, stretching, balancing, trying to remember to breathe and to stay focused, most people are quite happy to lie down and have a little rest, but it is more than that. You are allowing the body and the mind to drift towards the first phases of sleep when you are still ‘awake’ but slightly less responsive. It is like an emotional twilight, the phase between light and dark which is neither fully awake nor fully asleep. Often you will be aware of the teacher talking you through a relaxation but not be able to recall what was said. Sometimes you will actually fall asleep and the class is usually serenaded by at least one person “purring”. To help you understand the importance of savasana, think of your physical yoga practice as the equivalent of you creating your own natural medicine, the perfect antidote to all of your ills, and your savasana as the time that you take the remedy. The teacher is guiding you towards that ‘twilight’ place, as this is a place of deep REST. And rest is something that most of us are short of.
Rest is best
Resting means doing nothing whilst awake, not watching TV not reading not listening to a podcast, perhaps not even meditating, just getting comfortable and doing nothing. Rest often does lead to sleep, but even when it doesn’t it can be deeply replenishing. And ‘doing nothing’ is not a popular notion in our culture which is very results driven. We get so much satisfaction from ticking everything off our to-do list, even if in doing so we have worn ourselves down to the bone. If our efforts can’t be seen in the results, then were they a waste of time and energy? Think for a moment, if you have ever had to research a topic in depth. How much of your research actually ended up in the finished piece? Though you may look with depair at all the material on the cutting room floor, perhaps because of a time limit for a presentation or a word limit on a written piece, often the material that didn’t make the final cut was key to your understanding and may well have given rise to some breakthrough moments. In the same way we tend to think of rest as a waste of time when we have so much to bloody DO! Perhaps we could think of rest as the ‘research necessary for sleep’….would that give it more value? Maybe each day we need to write a “To-Don’t list” that requires that we take some time out just to chill. One of the best times to do this is at one of the natural junctions in your day. This may be mid-morning when you have the baby down for a nap and the laundry underway. This may be in your lunch-break from work, or at clocking off time. It may become part of your bedtime routine. But to make this new regime stick you need to schedule it in and practice resting regularly.
Still Life
It is surprisingly challenging to be physically still and allow the mind to free-wheel wherever it wants to go without tryng to control it: the equivalent of letting a dog off the lead for a good old run at it’s own pace. If you compare a dog trotting obediently beside its human companion on a lead along the pavement, to a dog crashing through the undergrowth in pursuit of a rabbit, you can guess which one is the more satisfying. Back in the days when women were expected to wear corsets to control their luscious curves, that moment at the end of the day when they could loosen their stays must have been a huge relief. We all need such a moment mentally, to free the mind and let the breath come easy. I think that one of the key reasons people avoid doing nothing is a fear of where the mind might go. What if it goes somewhere scary or sad or depressing? The reality is if we are scared, or sad, or angry, or overwhelmed, that state already exists within us. Refusing to allow the mind to go there is just another form of corsetry, it doesn’t make those places in the psyche go away, it just stifles them temporarily. This is where the ‘witnessing awareness’ that you learn in yoga comes to your aid. If the movements of the mind are like the strong currents in the ocean, your witnessing awareness is your life boat that keeps you above the water and safe from harm. Let me give you an example. Often I find myself turning over in my mind the way a particular relationship ended, and obsessing about some detail (usually a perceived injustice or hurt). Instead of disappearing down this ‘thought rabbit hole” like a demented Jack Russell Terrier, I can now (usually) observe what is happening: “I see my mind is reliving the argument that I had with (insert name). That’s Ok my mind can look through all of that again if it needs to but “I” don’t need to get swept away by that memory.” Sometimes I say out loud “my little boat will prevent me getting swept away.” What you might be surprised to find is when you operate from this perspective, the mind gets bored quite quickly and switches to think about something else. I wonder sometimes if in surpressing these unwelcome or painful thoughts we are just trying to submerge them, and the minute we stop exerting the effort to keep them down they pop up again. The image that comes to my mind is trying to hold a large inflatable beach ball under water. You know the minute you let go it will ROCKET up above the surface, whereas if you just left it to bob about it develops no such power. So why is all this witnessing of the thoughts so important? Because it is giving your brain time to download and sift through all of your thoughts and feelings, and if the only time it gets to do this is when you go to bed, you are unlikley to be able to get to sleep.
Dear Diary
One of the simplest ways to help the brain “digest” is to write it down. There is research to prove that physically writing things down on paper with a pen or pencil is more effective than typing on a device. Writing things down the ‘old-fashioned’ way improves both the retention and recall of memories. It also promotes brevity, as most of us will type a lot more than we could be bothered to write! This brevity is important as it prevents us from getting drawn deeply into recalling and reliving painful emotions, and promotes the ‘witnessing awareness.’ To finish the day by writing a brief entry in a journal, and creating lists for the next day can really help your brain off load and be ready to power down. Categorising your to-do list also helps you notice if you are planning a balanced day that contains enough self-care, stewardship (looking after the world) creativity, rest, and social contact and not just chores and work. Here is an example from my own journal:
“Quite a productive day, energy levels good and mood stable. Got the repairs done on the outhouse and made a batch of tea bread and a casserole which pleased me as I know that feeding myself well is a form of self-care that I need to practice. (Ditch dumpling recipe – soggy clumps). Had recurring worry about (name) anxious that I have offended them in some way and they are angry with me. This is now outside of my control. I do not know what they think or feel nor can I unless they choose to tell me. Breathe. Didn’t go for my walk today as knee sore so put feet up instead. This self-care lark is quite hard to schedule but I feel SO much better for it.
Tomorrow:
finish editing sleep article (work)
wash hair (self-care)
soak chick peas to make houmous (self-care/creative)
yoga practice (self-care/work/creative)
walk with (name) (social contact)
clean hallway floor (chores)
level off second veg patch (stewardship/chore)
clean bird baths (stewardship/chore)
give myself a manicure (self-care)
make collage (creative)
I write my journal in bed and leave it, and some scrap paper beside my bed, so that if I have trouble settling and thoughts pop up I can jot things down on my list or off-load thoughts into my journal. Give it a go. And the good news is, you don’t ever need to re-read it, just get it out of your head and onto the paper. (Remember though, every sheet of paper started life as a tree. I cut up and keep every envelope that comes through my door so I always have plenty of paper for lists. My journal is made from all the printer paper that was printed on one side held together with a bull-dog clip. Reduce! Reuse! Recycle folks!)
Sweet Dreams are made of…..YOGA
The yoga tradition is FULL of techniques to help you get restful sleep. Here is a quick guide.
Shake your asana
Focus on floor work, long holds, restorative poses and symmetry (i.e. poses where both sides of your body are doing the same thing at the same time like wide legged seated forward fold – Upavistha Konasana). Simple twists followed by forward folds work well and avoid backbends near bedtime (other than Bridge pose) as they can be too energising. Focus on a slow practice using your awareness of your breath as an anchor for your mind.
Sigh of relief
Once you are in bed and sleep would be welcome focus on your breathing, let it flow smoothly, slowly, and evenly. This simple exercise tells your mind and body that it is OK to stop thinking, working, and struggling. Without tensing or gripping, begin by simply slowing down your breath by lengthening each exhale slightly. Staying relaxed is key; only increase the duration of each exhale as much as you can whilst staying relaxed. Visualize yourself leaning into the exhale as you release any thoughts or stress and relax into your bed. Continue for as long as feels comfortable.
Half asleep
Yoga nidra, often translated as “yogic sleep,” can help loosen insomnia’s hold. You start by setting an intention (why am I doing this) and checking in with your deeper intentions for life (where am I going and am I on track?) Then, focus on feelings and associations that make you feel safe and content. Once you feel secure, begin to explore sensation in your body and foster awareness of your breath without the need to ‘fix’ anything. Once you are in bed, lie on your back, legs bent with a pillow behind your knees, arms relaxed by your sides, palms up and hands soft and start to run a ‘Body Scan’ This simply means directing your attention to each part of your body in turn, starting at the scalp and working your way down to your toes. Close your eyes as you work down the body becoming aware of any sensation coming from that part of the body, be that pleasant or unpleasant, welcome or unwelcome, allowing each area to soften and become heavier and easier. You might need to first tense the muscles before you can release them, for example by clenching a fist then relaxing your hand if this helps you. This practice leads the body and mind into a deep state of relaxation. This is when various emotions, thoughts and beliefs start to come up, often things that you had no idea were on your mind, perhaps experiences or emotions that you’ve not had the chance to deal with, or found too overwhelming to process. But now you will be able to welcome and respond to them all from your vantage point of the ‘witness’ and with a deep, underlying sense of ease. This process often brings to light new understanding and the resolution of internal conflict. It allows you to see yourself as open, expansive, unbound and unlimited
Positive vibes
Positive visualisation techniques can be very useful to get you back into a healthy sleep pattern. One of my favourites is to replay the day and comb through it for EVERY single positive thing that happened and make a ‘collage’ in my mind of snapshots of all the good things that I may have missed in the flow of a busy day. This also promotes the feeling of security that helps us relax and fall asleep. There are lots of free guided visualisations you can download and listen to on your headphones, and these are loaded with triggers to promote the relaxation response. It is a form of self-hypnosis and you will probably struggle to stay awake right to the end. I love them, and always end up trying to listen to them again to find out what happens, and I always fall asleep in the same place.
And so to bed…
I hope this series of articles have been helpful to those of you who are not sleeping as well as you would like to be. The bottom line is that though sleep is vital to your health and vitality, insomnia is not life threatening. So turn your alarm clock to the wall and interrupt the internal dialogue about how you are going to get through tomorrow on no sleep. The key to sound sleep lies in surrendering, not in trying harder. Sleep cannot be forced, but it can be coaxed. It is waiting for you. Allow yourself to come to it, sink into it , the world will carry on turning without you for a while…..
Please note, taking up yoga and meditation can help break the sleep/panic cycle but may not be enough if you have experienced trauma in the past or if your sleep problems are of long duration. Schedule a consultation with your G.P to check for underlying health conditions such as Sleep Apnoea or Circadian Rhythm Disorder and consider going into therapy with a skilled counsellor to help resolve emotional trauma . Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (C.B.T ) has also proven very helpful in establishing positive sleep patterns.
The post Sweet Dreams Are Made of This first appeared on .]]>This article is the third in the series on Sleep following “The Land of Nod” and “The Science of Sleep” so best to read those first if you haven’t already.
If you are experiencing difficulties getting asleep, staying asleep, or waking up still feeling tired then it would be worth checking through the suggestions in this article. If you have long term sleep difficulties then you have probably come across most of these ideas already, but remember it can take some time to develop a new sleep pattern so if you decide to try any of these suggestions you will have to stick at it for a few weeks
Caffeine Free
No this does NOT mean that you must forego your Cappuccino or cup of builders tea forever, after all caffeine can boost your mood, metabolism and mental and physical performance, which explains why many of us head for the kettle the minute we wake up. The good news is that caffeine is safe for most people when consumed in moderate amounts. However there is a genetic element to out tolerance to this substance, so some people will experience adverse effects after even a very small dose. Caffeine increases alertness by blocking the effects of a brain chemical (adenosine) that makes you feel sleepy. It also triggers the release of the “fight-or-flight” hormone (adrenaline) associated with increased energy. These effects can give rise to nervousness, irritability and insomnia. As caffeine can also cause stomach upset, rapid heart rate and the need to urinate more frequently you can see that it is NO friend of yours if you are not sleeping well.
To be absolutely sure that your caffeine consumption is not adversely affecting your sleep – I would put in place a hard line of no caffeine within 12 hours of bed time. This includes coffee, tea, hot chocolate and cocoa (many peoples go to night time beverage) as well as many fizzy drinks, including the horrifying array of ‘energy drinks’ which are loaded with caffeine and sugar. It can take up to 12 hours for the caffeine from just one caffeinated drink to wear off completely, so work back from your intended bedtime and make sure there is a 12 hour gap between your last caffeinated drink and your bed. Also, if you are getting take out coffee from a cafe, check how many shots of coffee your drink contains, as they tend to have a much higher caffeine content than the drinks we make at home. Remember, its not just how MUCH caffeine you take but how close to bedtime you take it, if you are having a coffee after lunch and hope to be asleep by 10pm you are working against your body. If you enjoy the taste of tea and coffee try the many decaffeinated versions available, but it would be better to stick to drinks that are naturally free of caffeine such as water and herbal tea.
Sugar Rush
Taking regular meals has an impact on sleep, as a drop in blood sugar causes your body to release stress hormones that will shunt sugar into your bloodstream to make you feel more alert.
You will sleep more deeply if you have finished digesting your food before you go to bed. A rich, heavy meal close to bedtime will interfere with your rest and leave you feeling sluggish in the morning. It would be worth trying to move your heaviest meal to an earlier time, perhaps even having your biggest meal at lunchtime and a lighter supper if you are eating later in the evening. Including some slow release carbohydrates in your evening meal can also help: choose from whole grain bread, rice or pasta, quinoa and sweet potato. These foods when eaten alongside certain proteins, increase the absorption of a particular amino acid that gets converted into the hormone that facilitates sleep (melatonin). Refined sugar and “white carbs” (white bread, rice and pasta) can disrupt sleep as they are absorbed immediately into the bloodstream and can make you restless and jittery. If you take an evening snack to ward off waking up because you are hungry then a small handful of almonds, a banana or a kiwi fruit would be better choices than a sugary drink or a muffin, and there is some evidence that these three foods (among others) promote restful sleep. If you have had to skip a meal then a small bowl of porridge may be the best thing to rebalance your sugar levels and help you to nod off.
A glass of wine and a cigarette
Alcohol and tobacco taken near bedtime will interfere with deep sleep. Although alcohol makes you sleepy, the sleep it induces is light, restless, and characterised by periods of wakefulness. If you suffer from long term sleep difficulties you might be better to abstain from alcohol completely as even one drink can throw your sleep rhythm out. Many women find that whilst going through the menopause their sleep improves if they take no alcohol. Remember, it is an addictive drug, it just happens to be the one that is sanctioned by our society. You can absolutely live without it! Tobacco is a stimulant that makes the heart race and blood pressure rise. We all know the health risks to smoking and as an ex-smoker myself, I never found the warnings particularly effective, they just panicked me into needing a cigarette to calm myself back down. You will quit when you are ready, but if you do smoke, have your last one of the day at least two hours before bed.
Are your sleeping tablets keeping you awake?
Most prescription drugs that induce sleep work within ten to twenty minutes, but they can leave you feeling groggy in the morning. They can be helpful for short-term insomnia resulting from a sudden stressful event, as they can break the sleepless cycle, but even the mainstream medical community agrees that sedatives are not helpful in resolving chronic sleep problems. Many drugs that were developed to combat depression are also used to alleviate chronic pain including nerve pain, and as they work by cutting down the amount of R.E.M sleep you get, they may leave you a little fuzzy in the morning. If your quality of sleep is suffering do schedule a review of your medication(s) with your GP. (It is never a good idea to stop taking a prescribed medicine abruptly so talk it through with your doctor first). There are some natural herbal remedies that can help with sleep such as Valerian root, passionflower, and hops, which can be taken before bedtime in either tablet or tea form, and they don’t affect your central nervous system the way prescription sleep medicines do.
Physical exercise
If you have a desk job you will need to exercise your body to ensure good sleep. Studies of elite athletes have shown that they do not require more (or less) sleep than more sedentary folk but their ratio of deep to light sleep is higher. You can replicate this by doing some form of aerobic exercise (that makes you get a bit hot and breathless) at least three times a week. However, bear in mind that aerobic exercise is stimulating so don’t schedule it too close to bedtime. It’s OK to do long, slow stretches before bed though, as releasing muscular tension prepares you for sleep. Focus on floor based yoga poses that you find relaxing. Avoid backward bends (with the exception of bridge pose) as they bring your energy up and are better practised earlier in the day.
Screen Time
There is now a sizeable body of research that connects the kind of light emitted from screens such as televisions, phones, tablets and games consoles with insomnia. Such devices emit what is known as ‘blue light’ which is also found in natural daylight, and this inhibits your body from producing the hormones necessary to induce sleep and encourages the production of the hormones that keep you awake. It is also worth making sure you have access to natural light during the day as this will help keep you wide awake and alert in the daylight hours. A walk outdoors in the morning is the simplest and best way to achieve this, but you can also consider changes like moving your desk closer to a window. The standard advice is to be away from any kind of screen for at least one hour before you want to be asleep. But many of us watch TV until we feel ready for bed, while others watch TV IN bed. And how many of us take our phones with us into the bedroom? If you are not getting enough quality sleep, it is well worth doing a screen detox for an hour before bed. You might find that after a few days you notice a difference. Aside from the light issue, when you are looking at a screen your brain is active. You may well feel like you are relaxing with a box set or unwinding playing a video game, but your brain is not relaxing, it is working hard to process images and sounds, or to follow a plot line, or strategise if you are playing computer games. Your brain needs time to recover from such periods of intense activity and you are not going to fall asleep until it has.
Bedtime routine
If you have ever looked after a baby or settled a new puppy or kitten into your family you know that it can involve many sleepless nights. It takes time and perseverance to establish a sleep routine. So if you would like better quality sleep, consider establishing a bedtime routine that you stick to as a matter of course, as this gives your brain time to ‘power down’ and signals to your sub-conscious that it is time to sleep. This routine can then trigger your body to start to produce the hormone that makes you sleepy (melatonin). Make a warm drink that is free of caffeine (herbal teas containing Valerian root are great natural sleep aids) , write in your journal, read or meditate. A gentle stretch to ease away the tensions of the day feels lovely, as does a bath or shower especially if it is candlelit. If you share a bathroom with others and know that you will be interrupted the minute you relax, then instead of getting frustrated by the inevitable knock on the door, opt for a footbath instead as you can do this outside of the bathroom. You don’t need a ‘foot spa’ just a large plastic bowl deep enough for the water to cover your feet . Add a few drops of a relaxing essential oil, Epsom salts or some bubble bath/shower gel, remember this has more to do with creating an ASSOCIATION with sleep than anything else so you can use whatever you to hand. Have the water nice warm water to encourage good blood flow to the feet and commit to doing NOTHING for 5 or 10 minutes until your feet feel warm all the way through. No books, phones or other activities here, just rest. When you are done dry your feet give them a little rub over with some moisturiser and put on some warm socks . Empty your bladder just before you go to bed (even if you don’ t think you need to) then its teeth, any lotions potions or medications and off to the boudoir.
Setting the stage
When you think about it, surprisingly few people have the luxury of a room to themselves dedicated to sleep – people living in bedsits, house shares or halls of residence, and now with the new era of Working From Home more of us will have an office in our bedroom. Many parents will have a baby sleeping in their bed or beside their bed, and it is not uncommon to wake up with children in your bed that were most definitely NOT there when you fell asleep. If you live with your partner you are most likely ‘sharing a bed’ though this is more accurately known as ‘fighting for a decent share of the bed.’ If your partner is restless in their sleep, sleep talks (or walks) or snores you are more likely to get woken up in the night (and more likely to plot a murder). A truce can often be achieved by investing in an eye mask and ear plugs. Separate beds or even bedrooms are less common in our culture, though this is often as much to do with lack of space as anything else. Make no mistake about it, your sleep is AS essential as nourishing food and clean safe drinking water, so if you are not getting enough sleep at the very least consider having a duvet each if you continue to share a bed. Not only will you sleep better, but you might stay married longer too. And not sharing a bed with your partner does not mean the end of your sex life (unless you both want it to) whereas chronic sleep deprivation just might. There is no earthly reason why you can’t retire to separate beds or even rooms after sex. (If its good enough for the Queen…)
Hot and Cold
If you are waking up in the night because you are too hot or too cold these are two of the easiest problems to remedy if you sleep alone. If you feel the cold at night, wearing pyjamas, paying attention to the tog rating of your duvet, or how many layers of blankets you use, warming the bed with a hot water bottle or electric blanket can all help. If you run hot in the night then sleeping in the nude with lighter covers can help as can having the window open. Research suggests that we sleep better in a slightly cooler room (around 18 degrees is often cited as the ideal temperature for sleep). But what happens if you share a bed with someone who has the opposite preference to you? Well firstly you need to work out what constitutes a preference, and what is a sleep requirement. For me personally as a menopausal woman, having the window open on all but the coldest of nights is a ‘sleep requirement’ as if I am too hot I cannot sleep. Whereas, whilst I prefer to sleep with the bedroom door shut, this is a preference and I sleep fine if the door is ajar. If you feel the cold more than your partner then having individual bed covers makes sense so that you can have a toastier duvet or more layers of blankets. There is no earthly reason why you cannot wear a fleece hat as well as mittens and socks in bed if it does the tricks. If you find it too cold with the window open and happen to share a bed with a menopausal woman, remember, she cannot control the hot flushes and a cooler room is the only thing that will help her. She is also prone to murderous rages so bear that in mind. Think about switching sides of the bed or moving the bed further away from the window so that you are not so close to any draughts. Again separate beds or even bedrooms can sort this issue out once and for all (as can divorce though this option CAN prove rather expensive). Negotiation is key if you share a bed or bedroom with another person.
See, hear….
At least half of your sleep is ‘light’, and whilst you are in a light phase of sleep you are easily woken. Often it is the intrusion of light or sound that wakes you, though you may not realise this at the time, you just suddenly find yourself wide awake for no apparent reason. So let’s consider what role your eyes and ears may be playing in your night time dramas.
Eyes: Your eyelids alone don’t shut out all light, so either wear an eye mask when you are ready to sleep or investigate other potential light sources from both inside and outside your bedroom. If light from outside your house is waking you (car headlamps going past your house, your neighbours overly zealous security lights coming on every time a cat walks past) then you need to attend to what is covering the window. Thicker curtains or black out blinds might be the answer. You can also get black out liners to put inside your existing curtains and these are inexpensive and relatively easy to install. If it’s light from elsewhere in the house then call a house meeting. Other members of the household need to be made aware if your sleep is broken by them turning on a landing or bathroom light when you are asleep. In my bathroom at home I have a battery powered ‘motion sense light’ which comes on when someone comes into the bathroom but emits a very low light, enough so you can do whatever you need to do in the bathroom but not enough to wake a light sleeper. You could do the same in the landing. You may find there are light sources inside your room that are disturbing you: numbers on a digital clock or devices that are on charge, both of which are easy to remedy by turning the clock to the wall or putting something in front of it, and moving devices on charge out of the bedroom or out of sight. You are hard-wired to respond to failing light by getting sleepy, so ambient lighting can be really important in the bedroom such as lamp-light to read by, or candles burning (but make sure you blow them all out before you nod off). If you are frightened of the dark then think about investing in a night light or have a lamp with the lowest output bulb that you can find. If you have to get out of bed for any reason during the night then see how little light you can introduce to the situation, so that your ‘wake up’ hormones are not stimulated.
Ears: you are more likely to become accustomed to a noise if it happens on a regular basis (which is why people can learn to sleep soundly when they live close to a railway or busy road) but a sudden or unfamiliar noise may wake you even when you are deeply asleep. Ear plugs can cut out unwelcome night noises if you can tolerate them, and if those noises are coming from other members of your household then call a meeting and ask for more consideration after you go to bed. (This does not work on babies). Some people need absolute silence to fall asleep and stay asleep whereas others find some sounds very soporific . It’s different strokes for different folks, some people have the radio on all night and will wake up if it is turned off (familiar noise can be soothing) others listen to quiet ambient music, or sound effects from nature such as rain falling or a forest at night or use talking books to get them off to sleep. Technology can be a boon if you do find some sound helps you fall asleep, as you can set a timer or have a virtual assistant such as Alexa to turn the sound off after a given time. A new one to me was the discovery of the Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (A.S.M.R) used by many insomniacs to lull them to sleep. This can be anything from the sound of hands folding and smoothing laundry to hair being brushed to a quiet voice whispering and there are lots of A.S.M.R recordings available for free on the internet.
smell, touch….
When it is finally dark your senses of touch and smell can bring comfort and help you sleep. When I had a newborn and a toddler in my bed most nights as well as a cat, a snoring husband and an office in my bedroom I used to buy a particular fabric softener that I only used on bedding and pyjamas, and that scent was connected in my mind with sleep. There are all kinds of smells that we can use to form an association with sleep and they need not incur expense such as freshly ironed bedding or the smell of the face cream you use before bed. Some essential oils promote sleep such as Chamomile, Lavender, Sweet Marjoram and Ylang-ylang among others which you can use in a diffuser, or add to water and spray into the room. All that really matters is that you choose a scent that for you equates with feeling relaxed and take it from there. Your sense of touch is hugely important especially if you are very sensitive to certain textures. I have quite a few heightened sensory responses, so for me cutting labels out of nightwear, and having smooth crumb free sheets could be the difference between a good night and a bad one. Some people respond to a weight on the body by relaxing so for them a weighted blanket or heavy bedding is key. You can also create your own “comforter” a small piece of material that need be no bigger than a flannel, out of a fabric that you enjoy feeling underneath your fingertips: silk, velvet, wool, cotton, whatever it may be, so that you hold this in your hand as part of your bed-time routine. And by the way teddies are not just for children, many adults still have a ‘cuddler’ on the bed or an extra pillow to hug as it brings comfort and makes us feel safe.
The princess and the pea
If your sleep is severely compromised then it is always worth checking your bed to see if there are any issues there. Clearly sleeping on a collapsed mattress or one with springs sticking in your back will not be helping the situation, nor will a mattress that is too firm or too soft. Mattresses are very expensive pieces of kit so first check that the bed frame itself is not broken. It is not uncommon to find broken struts or slats on a bed in which case it would be better off on the floor or on a make shift frame to allow air to circulate such as a futon base (and these are often available second hand very cheaply and for free on sites such as Freecycle). In my student days I slept on a very old thin futon mattress with all the give of a park bench but a base made out of old pallets made it much easier to sleep on. A mattress topper can breath new life into an old mattress at a fraction of the cost. Many mattresses benefit from being turned regularly not just back to front but head to toe as well as this prolongs their life and prevents sagging. They also need a good hoover when you change the bedding as this can help with things like allergies which could also be waking you up in the night if you are wheezing coughing or needing to blow your nose. If you can afford to replace your mattress do your research, try out as many beds as you can in store and channel the budget towards the mattress rather than the frame unless you have cash to splash. Pillows are a whole other can of worms. Some sleep with none some with several but often our pillows are not doing our necks any good. It’s like the porridge in the Goldilocks story we want it to be just right, and what works for each of us will be different. There are now pillows designed for different sleep positions and these can be a game changer for some people. Most pillows can be laundered at home and benefit from being washed regularly, especially if you are prone to allergies, but will still need replacing when they stop giving enough support. A stiff neck in the morning should trigger a pillow buying mission!
Safety First
In order to fall asleep and stay asleep we need to feel safe. If your brain perceives any kind of threat to your safety it will respond by keeping you awake and alert. Think about what makes YOU feel safe when you are in bed. Do you need the bedroom door shut to feel safe, or do you feel more relaxed if it is left ajar? What about the position of your bed in your bedroom? Some people need the door in clear sight to feel at ease, others feel safer with their bed tucked away behind a door. Some sleep better closer to the floor, some higher up in the air, some in the middle of the room, and others against a wall. My needs changed as I got older. In my younger days I would always opt for a spot against the wall and behind the door, I felt safe there. After I had kids and became a single Mum I took on the role of ‘protector’. I could then only sleep if my bed was in the middle of the room and in clear view of the door. Subconsciously I knew I could leap out of bed either side and be out of the door in a heart beat from this position and that actually helped me sleep more soundly. For the same reason I cannot sleep with an eye mask or ear plugs as I feel safer if I know that I would wake easily should I be required to do so. Everyone is different its about finding what works for you.
I hope that has given you some food for thought, please let me know what you have found helps you sleep well, it would be great if as a yoga community we could create a resource for our brothers and sisters who are awake at all hours, so if you know of a technique, a book, or anything else for that matter that has worked for you, please leave a comment on the website and I will start getting that together xx Michelle
The post Unlocking Sleep first appeared on .]]>If you are struggling to get enough restful sleep then perhaps it’s time for you to become a sleep scientist. If you ask a person who sleeps well what steps they take to get a good night they will probably not have a clue. Ask the same question of an insomniac and you will get a two hour Power Point presentation! We owe it to ourselves to understand what is happening to our bodies and minds and how a good night sleep affects us on a cellular level. So put on your lab coat and spectacles and lets do the science bit together….
Insomnia is defined as difficulty falling asleep or sustaining sleep for more than a few hours without waking. Its opposite but equally tiring condition is hypersomnia – sleeping for long periods but waking still feeling tired. Most of us will occasionally experience ‘unrestful’ sleep, but for some, the bad nights outnumber the good. Once you have had a few poor nights, the anxiety about how the next night might go actually feeds into the inability to relax and fall asleep. And once you’re stuck in the cycle it can be very difficult to break free. So how do we know if we are getting enough sleep? And what is the optimum amount of sleep? Some people are bright eyed and bushy tailed on just three hours, whilst others need a solid ten just to feel human. It turns out that each and every one of us has different sleep needs and these change throughout the life cycle. The most effective way to measure the quality of your sleep is by the effect it has on you the next day. If you feel well-rested when you get up and have plenty of energy to get you through the day, then you have nothing to worry about. If however you are are battling fatigue most of the day, or struggling to concentrate or feeling emotionally wobbly or worried about how you are going to cope, then there is a possibility that you are not getting enough sleep.
Not all sleep is created equal
We tend to think of “awake” and “asleep” as polar opposites like black and white. In reality sleep is more complex than this: there are times whilst we are asleep that we come very close to waking (this is when a sudden sound might wake us) and times when we are awake that we skirt very close to sleep (we experience this as ‘zoning out’). So instead of seeing awake and asleep as polar opposites with no middle ground, we could visualise them more like a yin-yang symbol: a little bit of light in the dark, and a little bit of dark in the light. If you use a fitness tracker (often worn on the wrist like a bracelet) you will already know that through the night you move through different types of sleep.
Put very simply, we can think of sleep as having three phases: light, deep and R.E.M.
LIGHT SLEEP: occurs throughout the night
Stage 1: Your sleep is shallow and not particularly restful, but it’s usually a quick transition to the next phase, so you’re not in it for very long (think of it as the equivalent of pulling away in first gear in your car, it just gets the journey started). You can still hear things and have some awareness of your surroundings so may not believe yourself to be asleep.
LIGHT SLEEP
Stage 2: Your sleep is a little deeper than stage 1 but you could still be easily woken. Your breathing and heart rate decrease slightly during this stage.
DEEP SLEEP: occurs primarily in the first half of the night
You are now much less responsive to outside stimuli and would be difficult to wake. Your breathing slows down even more as does your heart rate which becomes very regular with fewer fluctuations. Your muscles are very relaxed. Deep sleep is very much about the body as the ‘thinking parts’ of your brain are largely offline. This is when your body secretes the hormones associated with cellular repair which is why getting sufficient deep sleep is thought to strengthen your immune system.
R.E.M Sleep: occurs more in the second half of the night
In the same way that deep sleep is about your body, R.E.M sleep is about your brain which is very active during this phase. Your muscles are now completely inactive to the point of paralysis. R.E.M is when most dreaming happens and your eyes move rapidly in different directions (hence the name). Your heart rate increases and your breathing becomes more irregular. R.E.M is essential for the regulation of emotion and also for memory, as this is when your brain is clearing out and sorting data, and shifting some of it into your long term memory. It is also the peak of protein synthesis at the cellular level, which keeps many processes in the body working properly.
However your sleep is not a linear progression from light sleep to deep sleep to R.E.M. Instead sleep operates in cycles each lasting on average 90 minutes. Each cycle contains different proportions of each kind of sleep. Different people need a different number of cycles of sleep to wake feeling refreshed. During the second half of the night the cycles break down and you alternate between light sleep and R.E.M for the rest of the night.
Your sleep is made up of:
50% or more of light sleep
10—25% deep sleep
25% R.E.M sleep
Getting enough deep and R.E.M sleep is what refreshes you. Your deep sleep can be disrupted by pain, so many medical conditions such as arthritis can affect deep sleep as can the pain from injuries and illnesses. Shift work can affect your ability to achieve deep sleep as does age, we get less deep sleep in our later years. If your sleep is cut short for any reason, you will be losing out on R.E.M sleep and this can leave you feeling groggy, less able to focus, and can affect the functioning of your memory.
Although the deeper phases of sleep are essential for your health, they are also when you are at your most vulnerable. Think about it, during deep sleep your brain is almost completely shut down, and in R.E.M sleep your body is all but paralysed. You are extremely vulnerable in both these states as you would be difficult to rouse and slow to react as your body and brain would need to come back ‘on-line’. So we begin to see the value of the sleep cycles. If you were to have all of your deep and R.E.M sleep in long blocks,you would be more likely to sleep through an emergency situation which could prove a threat to your safety or even your life. Instead, as soon as your system completes one cycle of tasks you are switched quickly back to light sleep, meaning that you could wake easily and quickly if needbe. The problem arises when you are woken in this light phase of sleep by an outside stimuli that poses no real threat to you, like a neighbours security light coming on, or by an internal stimuli such as a worry. It might help to think of your light sleep as a security guard doing the rounds, between bouts of deep and R.E.M sleep, thus keeping you safe. I find this thought reassuring when I do have periods of night wakefulness. What we can do is optimise our opportunities to achieve these deeper states of sleep so that this essential maintenance work can be carried out by minimising the chances of being woken during our light sleep. (More on this in the next article “Unlocking Sleep”).
History Lesson
If we had records going back to our most ancient ancestors , I wonder what we might learn about sleep. Were we sleeping through the night as cave-dwelling people? Were we sleeping in groups perhaps with someone on ‘Night Watch’ to keep us safe? It may surprise you to know that the records we do have show that night waking is a normal phenomena. Humans have not always been awake all day and asleep all night. Like many other animals, (and indeed baby humans) we would naturally have periods of wakefulness in the night and naps during the day.
We can pinpoint a real shift in sleep patterns following the Industrial Revolution (around 1760). With machines beginning to replace manual labour, and the work place moving out of the home and into the factory, people were expected to work all of the hours required of them in one block of time with minimal breaks. The expectation became that the human ‘machine’ could work ceaselessly and produce a consistently high standard of work with minimal maintenance. This meant no more naps during the day and created the need for sleep to happen in one solid block at night.
Further advances such as the invention of electric light meant that the working day could be extended. Imagine for a moment living without electricity. For those of us with full sight we are so dependant on our eyes that almost all activity would have to stop the minute it was dark. Now our working day is more likely to be sat at a desk in artificial light than outdoors or in a factory , but we are still expected to perform like machines, working seamlessly for eight hours or more at a time with no fluctuation in our output.
Recently there was another technological advance that has played havoc with many peoples sleep patterns. Electric light used to be incandescent, a warm yellowish colour. In 1997 this changed as blue light emitting diodes (L.E.D’s) were developed. These use much less energy and have a much longer life span, but this blue light is the type we humans are most sensitive to. It is TWICE as effective at suppressing the release of sleep hormones as the old incandescent light was. In 2020 another shift occurred. As a consequence of the pandemic many peoples work place moved back into the home. We do not know as yet whether this trend for working from home will continue for the foreseeable future if it proves to be more cost effective for some businesses. If more people are able to work from home then perhaps a more flexible working day could evolve. Could this signify a return to a more natural sleep rhythm for some of us?
Night and Day
We are designed to fall asleep when it gets dark and wake up when it gets light. The presence or absence of daylight causes our bodies to produce specific hormones, some to wake us up and keep us awake and some to make us fall asleep and stay asleep. The extension of daylight hours made possible by artificial light, and the fact that more of us work indoors during the day, has tampered with our normal cycle of sleeping and waking.This is known as our Circadian Rhythm, natural internal process that regulates the sleep-wake cycle and repeats roughly every 24 hours. People who work shifts, or travellers who cross time zones, may experience sleep problems simply because they are trying to sleep when their internal clock is telling them it is daytime. This gives us some valuable data – it takes time for us to adjust to a new sleep rhythm. It is important that we have a realistic expectation of the time frame required to improve our sleep patterns. It will probably not happen overnight, especailly if your sleep has been disrupted for a long time. Take some solace from the knowledge that you are designed to move back into a state of balance, so unless this mechanism is beng blocked, possibly by an underlying medical condition, the potential exists within you to re-establish a good sleep pattern and get the rest that you need and deserve.
In the next article “Unlocking Sleep” we will start to look at practical ways to improve your sleep
Bedtime stories
I remember as a child waking up from a full night of sleep refreshed and excited about the day ahead, especially at the weekends and during the school holidays when the day was my own and all manner of adventures awaited me and my imaginary horse Dobbin. It will of course come as no surprise to any of you that I was rather a strange child…..
My parents were sticklers for routine and me, my brother and sister all had a fixed bedtime depending on our age, and after the teeth brushing and ‘last wee’ of the day we were tucked in, with traditional thick woollen blankets, soft warm pyjamas and on cold nights a hot water bottle. We were allowed to read in bed for half an hour, then it was lights out and I would drift off to sleep effortlessly and stay in The Land of Nod all night.
In my growing up years, we went from no TV, to a black and white box that churned and groaned in an attempt to change channel, to the ultimate luxury – a colour television. The TV lived in the living room, had three channels and much shorter broadcasting hours than we have now. I seem to remember there was nothing but the test card on much of the time.
This was before home computers and mobile phones, and watching TV was something we did as a family, following dramas week to week such as “The Jewel in The Crown” and then having to wait a week for the next instalment. We did eventually have central heating and double glazing installed but until then the bedroom was a chilly place, and getting into a cold bed required true grit (and thick pyjamas). Getting out of bed in the morning was nothing short of character building, who remembers seeing if Jack Frost had painted the INSIDE of their bedroom windows with ice? I remember breathing out and seeing my breath, and pledging that when I grew up I would learn to smoke so I could do this whenever I wanted to. (Sadly I did achieve this ambition though happily am now a non-smoker once again). As children we played outdoors a lot whatever the weather and had the freedom to roam around our neighbourhood unsupervised. I had no responsibilities (other than mucking out my imaginary horse, which I must confess I did not do regularly enough) and bed was a place I loved to be. Such different times.
Wide awake
Now as a 52 year old woman living through the menopause as well as the pandemic, I remember those days with a deep sense of longing. Could it be that the way life has changed so much in the past 50 years is affecting my sleep? I am fortunate that on the whole I have enjoyed good sleep, but I have had my fair share of bad nights in my life and sometimes these have triggered a bout of insomnia lasting anything from a few days to a few years. Here are a few examples:
-being so tired that I cannot keep my eyes open to carry on reading, but then lying awake in the dark for hours on end not particularly worried about anything, just awake.
-falling asleep quickly but waking up three or fours hours later convinced it’s the morning only to find that it is 1am and then just managing to drift off as the alarm clock beeps.
-going to bed rather drunk and waking up at 3am with a raging thirst and a banging head (no sympathy is required for this one).
-being woken in the night by my newborn attempting to latch on for a feed, a toddler with her elbow against my windpipe, a husband snoring and a cat digging its claws ecstatically into my hair whilst purring and drooling all over me. And sometimes all of these at once.
-waking in the night reliving an argument with a friend and not being able to let it go.
-being woken by ear-ache/tooth-ache/period pain having to get up to take pain killers getting back to sleep quickly but still feeling wiped out the next day.
-hot flushes that wake me up to throw off all the covers and open the window even when its snowing outside.
-not being able to get to sleep because my conscious is making me feel guilty about something I have done that needs to be atoned for.
-going to bed at 7pm sleeping through until 9am the next day and waking up still feeling tired.
-trying to fall asleep with a brain whirling with all the things I still need to do at work even though I am physically exhausted and yes I have written them all down on a notepad by my bed and I AM STILL AWAKE!!!!
-waking to the sound of a small child/cat/drunk friend projectile vomiting and spending the next two hours doing and redoing laundry. It turns out you can’t put vomit splattered bedding straight in the washing machine, you have to sluice it first.
-lying awake knowing that I need to address some issues in my relationship but afraid to rock the boat by starting a conversation about what needs to change in case it turns into an argument a cold war or even a break up.
-lying awake all night with a looming sense of dread that I cannot fully explain.
I bet some of these scenarios are familiar to many of you, and you can probably add quite a few more to the list. There will be times that our sleep is disturbed and there is nothing you can do about it, but often a couple of disturbed sleeps turns into a run of bad nights and sometimes chronic insomnia.
Globally around 15% of adults have difficulties sleeping and alarmingly children are now following the same trend. There are many good books available on sleep and as I am neither a scientist nor a sleep expert I would recommend that you go straight to the source for the hard science and wise advice (perhaps with your help we could come up with a list to share?) There are also a host of articles in newspapers and magazines, some of which are very informative, but many unbelievably trite and poorly informed. When I was researching this subject, I came across DOZENS of articles in the popular press full of such gems as: “Worry less and sleep like a baby.” In the words of the divine Stephen Fry such articles are:
“the art of stating the so fucking obvious it makes your nose bleed.”
Many of these articles are trying to sell you something- a weighted blanket, a herbal supplement, an app or a brand of pillow. But more dangerously, the sub-text of articles like these is that we are not doing enough, not trying hard enough and therefore our sleep difficulties are our own fault. This is such a pernicious belief to plant in the fertile soil of a mind, especially in these difficult days of living alongside the pandemic. To be constantly exposed to the idea that we should be coping better than we are encourages negative thoughts to flourish like weeds which can quickly smother our self-confidence and hope. After reading half a dozen such articles I felt like a total failure. They also presume that we all have bottomless pockets and can splurge on whatever the article is telling us to buy to guarantee that good nights sleep. I am keen not to add to such articles and in the interest of fairness will assume that pennies must be counted. After all, if money could solve sleep problems then the wealthy would be sleeping like lambs…..and they are not.
From my own experience after just a week of poor sleep:
– my concentration is shredded and it can take me significantly longer to accomplish tasks.
-my energy levels are diminished meaning I need more rests and breaks.
-my face in the bathroom mirror looks a good 10 years older.
-my mood is far from stable.
I am aware that a significant proportion of my students have endured long term sleep problems, but now I am hearing from more and more students that they have started having sleep difficulties since the pandemic hit in March 2020. Just as your lungs are the primary organ of breathing so your mind is the primary organ of sleep and your brain will keep you awake alert and ready to run if you don’t feel SAFE. The most primitive part of your brain reacts to any perceived threat to your safety by keeping you awake because being asleep or even drowsy leaves you vulnerable to attack. And so many people have been left feeling profoundly unsafe by this virus, the fear of getting sick, of becoming seriously ill, of dying, of losing loved ones. There is also fear about the future, financial problems, and job security. When you factor in that most of us we have had to acclimatise to a complete change of routine as well – wearing masks in public places, working from home, queuing to get in shops, home educating our kids, not being able to go shopping or to the pub or out for a meal, no wonder so many of us are awake in the middle of the night. Remember, the part of your brain that facilitates sleep is not the sophisticated part that can rationalise, it is the primitive instinctive part of you and you need to tune in to what it is trying to tell you.
So I have done lots of reading and lots of thinking, and, ironically lost some sleep while I worked through everything I discovered, and came to realise that this is a HUGE topic that I could never know enough about. I wanted to share it all with you in a series of articles and lesson plans all about SLEEP which is our theme for February 2021. Please bear in mind that I am no expert on sleep, nor do I aspire to be, but if the product of my research proves helpful to any of you then the time was well spent.
Over the next few weeks there will be several articles, looking at the science behind sleep, the Ayurvedic and Yogic perspective on sleep difficulties, as well as more Western practical ideas that are worth checking through if you are suffering from insomnia, either short or long term. There will be several lesson plans, including restorative floor based work, as well as more active practices focusing on the energetics of yoga and how this can improve sleep. I am working on a visualisation to help you prepare for bed, as well as pranayama (breath) practices that aid restful sleep and a guided Yoga Nidra called the 61 points that will come as an audio file that you can listen to in bed. These will all be on the Home Practice page and available to all of my Subscribers. For information on how to subscribe please visit the ‘Classes’ page on this website. This has turned out to be a huge chunk of work and it is taking me some time to get it all ready, but rest assured I am on the case, and hopefully we will all benefit from some more restful sleep soon…watch this space…..
xx
Michelle a.k.a The Crazy Guinea Pig Lady
From the moment we arrived things started to go wrong. We met the midwife assigned to care for her and her baby and from her first comment we knew we were in trouble. It was apparent that this person had made a judgement call about my friend and had decided that she did not warrant good care. I won’t go into details for the sake of my friends and this midwives confidentiality, but I was appalled. It seemed that this midwife was not only determined to withhold good care, but also to make it clear that she had judged my friend and found her worthless. And my friends crime? Tattoos. She has many rather beautiful and creative tattoos. Now, if you have ever had the experience of giving birth you will know that though it can be a profoundly empowering experience, there are also times when you feel incredibly vulnerable, at times speechless with pain and very frightened. In order for labour to progress the woman must feel SAFE. Needless to say my friend did not feel safe, and I felt angry. We decided to keep schtum and wait for the shift to change, as we feared that confronting her could make her appalling behaviour escalate, and just hoped that the next midwives would be kinder and less judgmental. And we were in luck. The next team came in, full of positivity and laughter, encouragement and skill. They delivered the most exquisite care to my friend who gave birth to her last child naturally and without intervention.
Immediately we wrote a very strongly worded letter to this midwife, her boss and the Trust making it very clear how unhappy we were. I am not an angry person, but one thing that riles me up is injustice. If you believe in astrology it may interest (and not surprise you) to know that I am a Taurean woman, and we are known to be rather bull headed at the best of times. This is certainly true of me. I prefer to compare myself to a stubborn terrier, once I get my teeth into something I WILL NOT LET GO!
So though we had gone through the correct channels not only to report this individual but also to protect any future clients that may be subjected to her judgement, I could not let it go. A few days later my friend and her baby were still in hospital and low and behold who should come into the cubicle but THE MIDWIFE. All sweetness and light now, smiling at my friend and cooing over the baby. She said “I am sorry if you thought I did not give you the very best care as I can assure you that that was my intention but you must understand that we were very busy that day and I was under a lot of pressure.”
Any apology that starts with “I am sorry if…” does not wash with me. I think it is a cop out and no true apology. I beckoned her over so I could speak to her quietly and said in my calmest voice:
“When people are under pressure you find out what their true nature is like. And yours, is HORRIBLE.”
She then left the cubicle. I know that what I said was harsh. But I wanted to give her pause for thought in the hope that she would not bring her judgmental attitude to the next client she deemed unworthy.
So why am I relating this story now? Because most of us will have felt under pressure over the last few months. Maybe it has been the pressure of working from home isolated from your colleagues, or the pressure of trying to home educate your children, or both, and if you have been doing both, and managed to hold on to even a SHRED of sanity I salute you! Perhaps it has been the pressure of losing your jobs and facing financial problems. Maybe it has been the pressure of not being allowed to see family or friends, to hold a new grandchild for the first time, or be present at the funeral of a loved one. Although my harsh comment to the midwife was distilled through a wall of anger, I still think there is some truth in what I said. When we are under pressure our social veneers tend to fall away and what is revealed is often not the most pleasant aspects of our character.
So what have I discovered about MY true nature? I have learned that I need both face to face interaction with my loved ones as well as long periods of solitude to be functional and that without these I become quite withdrawn and sullen. I have learned that my perfectionism, O.C.D and depression are there, JUST beneath the surface and I must always be vigilant lest these lunatics take over the asylum (which they frequently try to do). You know when you look out into a lake and are told that there are fish in it, and you look and look but your eyes can’t seem to penetrate the surface of the water, and then suddenly you become aware of those sinuous shapes moving beneath the surface? That is what it has felt like for me. I have some awareness of my issues largely thanks to a very skilled therapist and have done a lot of work on accepting myself as I am whilst at the same time loosening the strangle-hold of my ugly sisters: perfectionism and O.C.D. But under the surface those issues are still there. I used to think that all my issues would disappear once they had been brought into the light of my awareness. What I am learning is, they will always be there but that I need not be defined nor derailed by them. There is still a part of me that believes that having those issues under the surface is a sign of failure. And that can lead me into the swamp of shame pretty easily, and when that happens I stop being able to recognise that anything good is happening.
I do make myself stop and see the good, it is how I put the brakes on those tendencies, but I usually only remember to do so when I feel that horrid swamp sucking at my feet. Once you are chest deep in the swamp it is very difficult to access the things that you know will get you out of it. I KNOW that going for a run or a walk, listening to music, doing some yoga or seeking out the company of a trusted friend will help. But it feels like I just don’t have the energy. Imagine swimming round and round in a deep muddy pool with steep slippery sides and no visible way of getting out. Once you have realised that there is no easy way out, your only option is to try to heave yourself up on to the side with your upper body strength but the longer you have spent swimming around looking for a way out the less strength you have to make your escape. That to me is how it feels to move through and emerge from an episode of depression. And if you tend to get stuck in the swamp, make sure a few close and trusted friends can spot the signs that you are slipping so they can throw you a rope and PULL you out if need be.
So what positives have come out of this weird situation for me?
I have my daughter back living with me and I recognise that this may be the last time this happens, as she is nearly 26 and embarking on a PhD very soon that will entail living first in London and then Columbia, and I know I will miss her when she goes. I have made a home for her and her partner to keep them safe and able to work throughout lock-down. I have worked hard in my garden and it looks amazing. I have reinvented my business online despite having the technical prowess of a zebra. I have been released from the tyranny of the clock, waking when I am done sleeping and sleeping when I am done being awake. And my son got his first job after graduating during lock-down, a real cause for celebration and an impressive feat!
So I guess my message to you all this week is whatever you are doing, however you are coping (or not coping) the way you are feeling is valid and normal. Lots and lots of people are struggling with this pandemic. And curiously, as we emerge tentatively from lock down, more and more people are telling me that they are starting to fall apart when they feel they had been coping quite well up until now. And I think that this is normal too. When we are operating under stress it starts to feel ‘normal’ and when the stress is released the relief often manifests as tears or tiredness or confusion. I understand that getting your mats out even to do a short practice will feel like a Herculean feat some days, which is why this week I have created some more short sequences, ‘Sparks’ for you to learn off by heart. There is something comforting in repetition, it gives rise to the feeling that your yoga is a meditation in motion, which is exactly what the physical practice of yoga is. And learning the sequences off by heart gives you autonomy. You won’t then need to get your computer or phone or headphones, or depend on me to make your practice happen. And it also means that you get a break from looking at screens, I don’t know about you but I am heartily sick of them. Another idea is to try to annotate the sessions either with stick figures or words so you begin to practice with a piece of paper beside you instead of a video to watch. In time you won’t need the piece of paper either. I know that many of you use only my voice to guide you through the sessions, but that still pulls your focus away from your inner state. The real potency of yoga is revealed when you practice alone with no-one else to guide you, and start to listen to your body mind and breath with complete attention. And the good news is, you do not have to rely solely on your memory. Your body develops its own memory of the practice, so even when you think you can’t ‘remember’ what move comes next, your body might well know, if you let it take the lead.
So I will leave you with this seminal track by the Queen and David Bowie and may your mantra for this week be:
“Let this pressure reveal my true nature and help me acknowledge those aspects of myself that I prefer to keep hidden. Let the light of my new awareness illuminate my mind”
Years ago as a student nurse on a night shift one of my patients fell out of bed. She was an elderly lady with dementia, and very distressed. It was not uncommon in those days to be left alone and unsupervised on a ward at night and to have one qualified nurse ‘keeping an eye’ on several wards at once. We had all been sent on a safe lifting course and cautioned never to try to lift a patient alone, but what’s a girl to do? Here is my patient on the floor with her hospital gown up round her ears, in pain and distressed and no-one is coming to help. She was a large lady and in those days I was a tiny little thing (the joys of being 24 and able to live on chocolate and stay as thin as a whippet!!) , but I managed to get her back into bed, soothed and settled until the staff nurse arrived to assess her. I was told off for lifting her, and that I should have left her on the floor until help arrived. There is no way I could have left that lady on the floor for close to half an hour. The next morning I woke up and couldn’t move my head. I was prescribed a neck brace by Occupational Health and sent back to work the next day. For eight weeks I worked wearing this collar, as my neck muscles got weaker and weaker and this has left me with a life long issue with my neck. Now my neck is like my temperature gauge of how stressed I am, so I know that when I wake up with an echo of that stiff neck and can’t turn my head to the right, I need to address my stress. I recognise that as my stress builds I start to hold a slightly ‘braced’ posture…think of the image of someone on a roller coaster ride who really does not want to there: shoulders up by their ears, arms stiff head pulled back in terror. So what has been stressing me out?
Aside from all the change and disturbance caused by the pandemic, I have found myself at times despairing of human kinds tendency to create division and pass judgement on one another. I am as guilty of this as the next person but I am trying oh so hard to keep this behaviour above the level of my awareness so that it cannot do untold and unseen damage. It’s often not the behaviour that we are aware of that causes us and other problems, but the unconscious patterns lurking beneath the surface like the hazard posed by an iceberg to a ship navigating icy waters.
There have always been divisive issues in our society hence the old adage never to discuss politics or religion at the dinner table. We identify ourselves as subscribers to certain beliefs and then divide ourselves along the fault lines of those beliefs into groups. All through life we have to make decisions about what to do at any given moment that cause us to identify with one group and dis-identify with another. And remember you can be a member of lots of different groups at the same time, even when there is conflict between the beliefs of those groups. Let me give you an example from my own life experience of belonging to lots of different groups at the same time.
I birthed both of my babies at home: the first a long and difficult labour lasting 22 hours, and the second a very large baby of nearly 11 lb. I was a stay at home Mum who practiced attachment parenting (basically I lugged my babies round in my arms all the time) and co-sleeping which meant no-one got any sleep because the baby was snuffling and grunting around in the bed all night. I started my parenting journey as a lone parent for which I was criticised for being a ‘drain on the state’ and then a respectable married lady with another baby, which no-one seemed to object to. I then became a divorced woman with two children by different fathers. And it seems LOTS of people have an opinion about that and not many of those opinions were positive. My babies wore terry nappies and plastic pants which I washed in the machine and I breast fed on demand for the first year (even less sleep). I weaned them onto a vegan diet and made all of their food by hand. I also had both of my children vaccinated, sent them to nursery and then school and was a big believer in rules and routines, rather than the libertarian parenting style which is led by what the child wants to do. So I belonged to lots of different groups at the SAME TIME. When I told people I was booked for home birth I got two reactions. One was “You can do this go girl!” and the other was “That’s dangerous, don’t you care if your baby dies?” Many of my friends at the La Leche League breastfeeding group practiced libertarian parenting and were unimpressed by my talk of strict bedtimes and routines.
Most of my friends had their baby in a cot in a different room from day one, and I was regularly quizzed about letting my babies sleep in my bed. Didn’t I CARE if I rolled over in the night and suffocated my child?? Similarly I was admonished from both sides of the vaccination debate and told that I was doing the right thing not only for my baby but for public health, and also that I was doing the wrong thing and putting my baby at risk unnecessarily. I made my decisions based on my own research and instincts. I didn’t make those decisions because I was ill-informed or stupid. Usually when we make a choice, if we are lucky enough to have choices, we do so with the best of intentions and informed by the facts that we can access. But once we have made those choices, we have a tendency to stand by and defend those choices and reject the opposing view as wrong. And this for me is where the problem really starts.
I try to remember that not everyone has the same choices as me, or the same life experiences as me. I also try very very hard to believe that everyone is doing their best with the tools they have. I came across this notion that everyone is doing their best whilst reading Brene Brown’s book, “Rising Strong” where she relates this story.
Brene was asked to go take on a speaking engagement that she was neither particularly interested in, nor especially well paid for. For various reasons she felt ‘obliged ‘to agree to do it, and later found out that all delegates had to share rooms. Brene has a particular aversion to sharing a room with a stranger so was feeling tense before she even got to the venue. When she walked into her assigned room she found her room-mate sitting on the sofa, eating a doughnut, with her muddy boots up on on the seat. Brene offered her hand to introduce herself and the woman responded by wiping both of her sugary sticky hands on the sofa cushions before extending her own hand and saying “It’s not our couch!” The woman then went out onto the balcony and lit a cigarette. Brene felt she must say that it was a no smoking hotel and the woman countered with “they didn’t say anything about the balcony!” Brene then pointed out that the smoke was blowing back into their shared room. The woman replied “we can spray some perfume around.” Brene admits to being enraged by this womans behaviour and chose to leave immediately after giving her talk to avoid sharing the room. She then relates that she found herself in a bad mood with everyone she encountered on her way home and the days that followed. She took this experience to discuss with her therapist. After relating the story in some depth her therapist asked;
“Do you think it is possible that your room mate was doing the best she could that weekend?”
Well needless to say Brene did NOT think the woman had been doing the best she could and went on to express her opinion that some people just don’t care about the rules and are selfish and narrow minded and just plain WRONG. Over the weeks that followed she became increasingly aggravated by the notion that the woman was doing her best, and whilst talking the incident over with a friend she finally found someone who agreed with her point of view. At last! Brene felt validated in her opinion of this monstrous woman!! Her friend THEN said “Let’s take breastfeeding for example.” She told Brene that she had really struggled to breastfeed her daughter but had persevered through infections, cracked nipples and sleepless nights and finished off by saying “If you’re not going to breastfeed for at least a year, you should think twice about having children. You’re NOT doing the best you can and do you not think your children deserve the best? Quitting is lazy. And if quitting really is your best, then maybe your best is just not good enough.” Brene had only managed to feed her own babies for a very short time and felt utterly shamed by her friends judgement of her as a mother and the assumption that she had not tried her best. But it did lead her to the realisation that her life was better when she assumed that people were doing their best, as this kept her out of judgment and allowed her to focus on what IS, rather than on what could or should be.
This was such a powerful lesson for me, and one that I have been trying to put into practice on a daily basis and frequently failing (But I am doing my best).
The pandemic seems to have heightened this human need to divide into factions and throw rocks at each other. I have heard of two new tribes that we have created:
The “Covidiots” and The “Covirtuous”.
The Covirtuous believe that anyone who does not comply to the letter of the rules on lockdown is a Covidiot: a person who has no respect for the law or for other people and is therefore stupid, selfish and irresponsible.
The Covidiots in turn believe the Covirtuous to be mindless sheep, unable to think for themselves, or to apply common sense, or cope with any kind of nuanced reasoning. Do you remember the Frankie Goes to Hollywood song Two Tribes? “When two tribes go to war, a point is all that you can score.”
And I am sick of the point scoring. Life is nuanced and complicated and I truly believe everyone is doing the best they can. We don’t KNOW what motivates people to make the choices they make, or even what choices they have access to, and we make that judgement call at our peril. Bob Marleys first single was a track called “Judge Not” and here are the lyrics:
“Don’t you look at me so smug
And say I’m going bad
Who are you to judge me
And the life that I live?
I know that I’m not perfect
And that I don’t claim to be
So before you point your fingers
Be sure your hands are clean
Judge not
Before you judge yourself
Judge not
If you’re not ready for judgement
The boat of life is rocking
And you may stumble too
So while you talk about me
Someone else is judging you
A very on point message for our times hey?
And then came the Black Lives Matter protests in response to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on the 25th May 2020 when a police officer knelt on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds killing him. And again the tribes form and the point scoring rages on: protestors being blamed for prompting the second wave of the virus, whilst those who did not take to the streets are accused of turning a blind eye to police brutality.
With all of this going on I am not sure I want to come out of my bunker really.
But I have a ray of hope.
A few years ago I was having a conversation with my son Theo about my own prejudices. We were talking in particular about my lack of understanding of the Transgender Community and my son explained to me why I needed to adjust my thinking to be more open minded and inclusive. My lack of understanding came from ignorance: I had met very few Trans people and had not until quite recently heard the term “Transgender.” But as my son very patiently pointed out, ignorance is not a rationale for prejudice, it identifies the need for education. And he was right. I took it upon myself to listen to interviews with people describing their own trans experience, and to talk to experts in the field of inclusivity and empowerment, as well as many more discussions with my son and daughter and their partners who are all much more informed than me, until I had a better understanding. And my belief system shifted in the light of this new understanding. I had to strip myself of my previous view based in ignorance and fear, admit and accept I was wrong and evolve. I asked my son if he has hope for his generation and the future and this is what he said: “I believe that everyone deserves and should have the same rights and no-one could convince me otherwise. But I would like to think that I could talk to someone who does not believe in equal rights for all and get them to change their mind.”
And that for me was a ray of light. When the sunshine streams in through a dirty window you can see the grime and you get the opportunity to clean it (and you know how I LOVE to clean!)
Recently I was sent a podcast called “The Blinding Light of Sophisticated Pseudoscience.” It was a robust discussion of the validity of various alternative health practices, and the participants were all very clever scientists. I enjoyed the debate though I did not agree with much of what was said, but the most important thing I took away with me was this. One of the scientists was talking about how to engage in debate with someone who holds the opposite view to you and this is what he said:
“Have you ever changed your mind on a subject after you have been called an idiot?”
A very good question and well worth a ponder. Funnily enough my neck has eased since I revisited the notion that “everyone is doing their best” and I have taken it as an opportunity to base this weeks lessons on releasing tension from the upper body. This weeks relaxation is about understanding that everyone is made of the same stuff with the same struggles and that we have the choice to create connection rather than division. We are all entitled to an opinion, that’s the easy part, but perhaps we need to learn when to voice them and when to keep them to ourselves. Here is a fantastic t-shirt that my daughter wears with pride, I think I might have to get one (because as we all know daughters just LOVE it when their middle-aged Mum copies their style…)
I will leave you with this track from Bob Marley which contains the reworked lyric from his earlier song:
” The road of life is rocky and you may stumble too
So while you point your fingers someone else is judging you
Love your brotherman!”
Enjoy. Have a little dance, it will do you good
xx
Michelle
(with heartfelt thanks to Ros, Theo, Gareth and Rachel for being so patient with me when my views were so out of date, to SC for your burning desire to make the world a fairer place and how you are bringing that to life in your company, to SH for teaching me that a single occupancy room is a BIG DEAL , to AB for sharing so much info on BLM, to PD for sharing the Sceptics in a Pub podcasts and teaching me not to call people idiots!)
I am very much an all or nothing kind of person. I am EITHER going running, eating quinoa, reading philosophy and flossing my teeth OR crashed out on the sofa watching crap TV and eating family sized packs of Kettle Chips. There is an element of compulsion, or obsession in everything I do. I have always been this way and though I know I feel much better when I am leading a healthy lifestyle it seems that after a certain amount of time I feel the need to go and revisit some of my old negative habits. I have been thinking about this a lot since lock down as I had imagined that I would use this unique time to get super-fit and healthy. As yet, this has not happened! I realise that I tend to set myself up to fail by aiming for very difficult to reach goals. I am getting better at spotting this and I do truly believe that compassion is much more likely to lead to the realisation of ambitions than self-loathing. And I also know that setting realistic goals starts the ball rolling for me. For example in the context of doing my practice, I can lure myself onto the mat if my aim is to only do 10 minutes, whereas if I declare I am going to do a 90 minute practice every day I will probably fail. It feels as if all my ‘good’ habits are roped together like rock climbers on a mountain face. If one person slips and falls whilst on the rock face, they are protected from plunging to their death by the safety rope, but the other climbers are placed in peril: it becomes very difficult for them to stay put and almost impossible to progress, and there is a very real danger that they will all be pulled off the mountain before too long.
Once my good habits have plummeted into the depths my bad habits come scrambling up the rock-face at incredible speed, like a pack of starving wolves, and my bad habits seem so much stronger than my good ones. When I am working in my garden I see this play out with the plants I cultivate that need endless tending and mulching and pruning, and dividing and staking up and feeding just to keep them alive, whilst the weeds need no such coddling, they are strong and virile and difficult to eradicate.
Now is the case of my garden it is true that the weeds have been there much longer than the cultivated plants. And it is also true that most of my bad habits and negative thought spirals pre-date my newer more positive habits. In yoga philosophy our habits are called samskaras. Samskara simply means a pattern that is repeated without thought. Think about it: we all have plenty of ‘positive’ samskaras or habits, beneficial things we do without having to think about it. Brushing our teeth, showering, putting on deodorant, wearing clean clothes. We don’t need to be reminded to do these things, we just do them. (This does not hold true for all teenage boys however). Now for me there are two different circumstances that cause me to part ways with my good habits. The first is an episode of depression that even after all these years I fail to recognise. If I ‘can’t be bothered’ to brush my teeth, or take a shower or put my clothes in the laundry basket and get out some clean ones, then the sirens should be sounding!! This is the first rock climber losing her footing and falling, finding herself suspended in space and putting all the other good habits in peril. The second is this: if I have been practicing my good habits and feeling great, I then reward myself with some of my bad habits. I think we all have our ‘guilty pleasures”:binge watching an entire boxset, downing one too many gin and tonics, hitting the chips and dips with great relish, and there is nothing wrong with this. It only becomes a problem if we have an all or nothing the mind-set:
“Oh I have blown it now so might as well stop doing all the healthy stuff and just accept that I am lazy and undisciplined and my future will probably involve having to be cut out of my house by the fire brigade still clutching the remote control and the biscuit tin.”
Do you remember this rhyme from childhood
“There was a little girl and she had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good she was very very good but when she was bad she was HORRID.”
Ring any bells? The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow apparently wrote it about his daughter Edith. That for me sums up the dichotomy of ‘good’ Michelle and ‘bad’ Michelle and historically I cut myself NO slack whatsoever. If I slipped up just ONCE then I was bad, and all my good habits were thrown up in the air like a pack of cards. These days I do better. I am much more forgiving of myself when I slip, which actually makes it much easier to get back on track.
So, back to those samskaras. Think about this, if you walked across a meadow with lush waist high grass every day for a month, you would wear a track into the undergrowth. Once the track is clearly visible, you are much more likely to walk that track than set off in a different direction and battle your way through the undergrowth. Why? Because it is easier. It is exactly the same with our habits. When we repeat the same behaviour over and over again it creates a path or groove in our consciousness making it easier for us to repeat that behaviour without having to think. When this gives rise to a good habit like always having a nourishing breakfast, remembering to put on sunscreen, or going for a walk in your lunch break, we are happy and we feel good. But when this gives rise to a bad habit, like having a large glass of wine the minute you get in in from work, then another, then another, you are heading for trouble.
This pandemic will have thrown all our usual patterns into disarray, and everyone has reacted to this upheaval in their own unique way. Some are thriving, enjoying the slower pace, and feeling very content whilst others are struggling and feeling very much at sea. Many people are now either facing more risk at work, which is very stressful, or are unable to work which gives rise to its own stresses. I have heard from some students that they are on their mat regularly and really getting into their yoga practice, and from others that despite their best intentions they are yet to set foot on the mat. Some people are getting more exercise than they did before as they have a more flexible day, or more time, or both and can get out for a walk or a run, but others are getting less, perhaps because their “commute” to work now involves walking from the bedroom to the dining room table to open a laptop, and the gyms are no longer open. For those with kids at home I wonder how they carve any “me-time” out at all.
I think it is now more important than ever NOT to compare your coping strategies with other peoples. If you do, it will have one of two effects, either you will see yourself as doing better than most other people and your ego will inflate, or you will see yourself as doing worse than most other people and your ego will deflate, and neither of these outcomes are beneficial to your soul. If you are coping well, understand that others may not be, and if you are not coping don’t start beating yourself up because everyone else seems to have adapted more easily than you.
My mantra this week has been “Just keep swimming” from the film “Finding Nemo”. Now I have never been a huge fan of animated children’s films, but this one I loved, which is strange as I have Thalassophobia (fear of the sea).For those of you who have not seen it, it is about a marine fish that gets caught in the wild and taken thousands of miles away to an aquarium. The adventure begins when his father sets off on what seems like a hopeless quest to find his missing son. He is helped by a character called Dory , a fish with a memory span of about 30 seconds. This means that she hardly ever has a clue who she is, where she is going or why, so she sings to herself “Just keep swimming! Just Keep Swimming!” Lets just say, over the last 11 weeks, I have found that I can relate to Dory more than usual!
So here is my suggestion. To help those of you who are struggling to find your groove at the moment I have organised this weeks lessons in a different way. I have broken the classes down into 10 minute segments that all stand alone as short practices. I have called these short practices ‘sparks’, as it only takes a spark to ignite a fire.
Now, if you are struggling to get on the mat this is what I would like you to do. I want you to set yourself a sankalpa each morning when you wake up. A sankalpa is an intention. I want you to say it our loud and then write it down, or draw it. Each day, I want you to commit to doing just ONE of the ten minute practices. You can do the same one every day if you want to or try a different one each time, whatever suits you. Ten minutes. And there is more homework. If you are not in self-isolation and able to leave the house, I want you to find a walk in your neighbourhood, perhaps just around the block that is between 5 and 10 minutes long, no longer. You need to walk briskly so that you get warm and slightly breathless. Every day. Rain or shine. If you are confined to the house, you could either walk up and down the stairs briskly for one minute or run on the spot for one minute, or do star-jumps for one minute. Every day. Whichever day you start I want you to commit to these two habits every day for a full week, because if we want to establish good habits we have to repeat that behaviour over and over again to wear that ‘groove’ into our consciousness. And yes that takes some effort and some commitment.
So your sankalpa might be something like:
“Today I am going to nourish my body and soul by making the time and space to do my yoga and take my walk. I am going to make these two things a priority and I am going to put my well-being at the top of my agenda.” However you choose to construct your sankalpa it needs to be phrased in a positive way so that it sows the seed of this new behaviour into your subconscious, thus using self-compassion rather than self-loathing as your motivating force.
If it all falls apart, forgive yourself, and then have another go. And another. And another.
And let me know how you are getting on.
I will leave you with these words By Charles Reade
“Sow a thought, and you reap an act; Sow an act, and you reap a habit; Sow a habit, and you reap a character; Sow a character, and you reap a destiny”
xxx
Michelle
In our culture the idea of slowing down tends to be associated with old age or infirmity of some kind, rather than something we would do by choice to enhance our health and well-being. It is not unusual for someone to comment “Oh poor thing, he is slowing down” when they observe someone who has become frail going about their daily activities at a slower pace. In a world where achievement is everything, we pity those who cannot maintain the hectic pace. Burn out has become a badge of honour (if you have not been diagnosed with adrenal fatigue YOU ARE NOT WORKING HARD ENOUGH!!) and the question we ask a stranger at a party is not “Who are you?” but “What do you do?”
It has always been a cause of some hilarity amongst the people who know me the best that I chose yoga as my profession, when it is widely known that I cannot sit still. I am a DO-er, and while others talk at length about the merits of BEING I would be DOING the washing up, popping the hoover round, knocking up a batch of scones and emptying the bin whilst taking a phone call preferably with a duster strapped to each foot so I could polish the floor at the same time. I always start the day with a list and tell myself that only when EVERYTHING on the list is done can I do the stuff I actually WANT to do like take a nap, play the piano, make some jewellery or watch a film. And guess what. Most days I don’t get the list done (and if it looks like I might I can always add more….). People like me are almost impossible to help. If a kind bystander offered to do some of my chores for me, to give me time to rest, I would let them water the garden and cook the tea, but I would then use that time to sand down a table or empty the loft.
I remember as a kid I loved nothing more than to curl up in a chair with an adventure story and lose an afternoon, but even back then there never seemed to be enough time. There was always so much to DO: school, theatre group, cello and piano practice, homework and chores. As a result I only really ever read in bed, a habit that followed me into my adult life. Somewhere along the line I internalised the belief that ‘doing nothing’ was both lazy and a waste of time so if it must be done, do it in secret!
Brene Brown (researcher and author) says that one of the pillars of cultivating a whole hearted life is to “cultivate play and rest and to let go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity in place of self-worth”. Wise words. Luckily I am ageing, so whereas in my thirties and forties I could run on empty and had seemingly boundless energy (though in truth I was living on coffee, sugar and cigarettes) now I just run out of steam. Most afternoons I take a nap, and sometimes the same list is on the fridge for days on end until eventually I just rub it out. I am slowing down, but I still feel guilty when I am not busy. And I feel as if I SHOULD be busy, ALL of the time.
In her article in Yoga Journal “Busyness Plan” Sally Kempton talks about the difference between internal and external busyness and how to tell them apart, I found this very useful and it totally busted my “Yes well I WOULD love to have a sit down I really would” narrative. She explains there are two types of busyness
- External busyness – the pressure that comes from genuinely having a lot to do
- Internal busyness – the breathless, stress-triggering fear that you have too much to do and not enough time to do it
So how do you know if you are suffering from internal busyness? What happens when you have a moment when there appears to be nothing pressing that needs doing? Can you rest into that moment and catch your breath or do you still feel wound up and sure that there is something really important that you have forgotten to do? If the latter, then I am sorry to tell you, you have Internal Busyness Syndrome.
Internal busyness makes you feel as if you are clinging on to a horse that has bolted – not in control and deeply afraid of what might happen if you let go. This fear stimulates the release of more adrenaline and that in turn makes you feel even more scattered and on edge. You are also more likely to begin to rely on sugar caffeine or nicotine to bypass the need for rest. In this heightened state you tend to get impatient with the people around you and then berate yourself for your snappy behaviour. You begin to dread running into friends while you are out on a walk, (which is of course being monitored by your Fitbit and timed) because you simply can’t afford to stop for a second to say hello. Interestingly believing yourself to be short of time not only means you are more likely to ignore your own needs such as the need for rest and play, but also more likely to ignore a cry for help from someone else. In the famous Good Samaritan study, trainee priests on their way to a seminar, came across a stranger in a state of collapse in their path. The experiment showed that those participants who had been put under additional pressure NOT to be late for the seminar were less likely to stop and offer assistance. You can read the full experiment here http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/soc_psych/darley_samarit.html
This study points to the cause of internal busyness: our attitude to time. This is beautifully explained by Lynne Twist in her book “The Soul of Money”
“..for many people, the first waking thought of the day is ‘I didn’t get enough sleep’. The next one is “I don’t have enough time’. Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of….before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night our minds are already racing with a litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lack…this internal condition of scarcity, this mind set of scarcity, lives at the very heart of our jealousy, our greed our prejudice and our arguments with life…”
So when we believe we are short of time, what activities end up on the cutting room floor? The fun stuff, the play, the rest, the sitting on a sun lounger with a book open on your lap watching the birds, the long chat with a friend over a cuppa, in short, all the things that do not yield a quantifiable result but that make life worth living. Doing something “just for the fun on it” becomes increasingly rare the busier we get. We have so much to do and so little time to do it in, that even the thought of deviating from the to-do list can cause more stress. Our time is precious and cannot be wasted! We begin to equate play, rest and even sleep as things that we do not have time for. Whatever it is we are doing, working, gardening, raising a family, studying, we keep our noses to the grindstone and plough on relentlessly. And what is the impact of this on our lives? Brene Brown says
“Consider this: the opposite of play is not work, but depression.”
And is it really true that we have no free time? When you see footage of adult polar bears sliding down banks of ice, only to climb up and slide down again, it is clear that they are playing. So even in the harsh conditions of an Arctic winter, our planets biggest land based carnivore, that relies on a landscape decimated by global warming to hunt and provide for its young, finds the time to do something just because it is fun. And yet we can’t.
And if we take a closer look at some of the things we do that appear not to have a measurable outcome, what is our real motivation? Do we meditate because MRI studies proved that it can increase activity in the “happiness” section of the brain? Do we do our yoga practice because it recharges our batteries and allows us to overwork? There is a very real risk that even our spiritual practices are feeding the ego’s lie that if we’re going to spend time on something, it needs to produce a measurable result. Once upon a time you went for a walk to get some gentle exercise, clear your head, engage with nature, perhaps stop and chat to a stranger. Now? It’s about “getting your steps in” or beating yesterday’s time. Yuck. When I go for a walk I see so many people grimly striding along eyes glazed, earphones in and nine times out of ten they would walk right past me with no eye contact no smile nothing. I make it my business to wave and call out a cheery hello, and usually they reciprocate when they feel they must, though there are a few that will carry on grimly determined as if they had not seen me. My favourite though are the REAL hard-core elite who respond with a grimace, a tut or even an eye roll, all of which I must confess make me laugh uncontrollably. When I discovered that the “10,000 steps a day” idea came not from research into the health benefits of walking but from an advertising campaign to sell…..wait for it…..a device you wear on your wrist to count your steps, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Now don’t get me wrong we do need to move, especially if our jobs are sedentary or we have impaired mobility, but we also need to have fun, rest and SLOW DOWN.
It’s normal and healthy to derive a sense of self-esteem from your achievements, but an addiction to busyness is the work of the ego. “If I’m busy, that means I exist. I’m worthwhile and I am wanted.” At the core of this belief is a terror of emptiness.
“It is the work of the ego to create fear of absence, for absence gives the ego nothing to manipulate. The ego can work with anything but it cannot work with nothing. “(Simon Parke “The Journey Home”)
And when you DO allow yourself to rest in the emptiness, it is not frightening at all, it is sheer bliss. Try it.
Over the past two months we have all been given an unprecedented opportunity to slow down, and more and more people are experiencing for themselves what a potent manoeuvre this can be. But like every new habit it takes practice. So here are a three practices for you to try. They only take a few moments, can you spare the time??
Xx Michelle
Slow the pendulum
RIGHT NOW stand tall and begin to sway slowly from side to side so you feel the weight shift from one foot to the other from one side of the body to the other. At the end of each movement, notice the pause. Tune in to the pause on the right side, then on the left. Focus on the pause and let the movement flow from the pause, your movements getting smaller and smaller until you become still in the centre
Who Am I?
STOP. Close your eyes. Ask yourself, “When I’m not busy, not productive, who am I? When I’m not thinking, not moving, not emotionally engaged, not talking or listening, not thinking or planning who am I?” Hover in this space for five deep breaths and observe what, if anything arises.
Hit the Pause Button
STOP. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing become totally still.
Say to yourself out loud
“I have all the time in the world.” as you breathe deeply and slowly five times.
This week after nearly two months of uncertainty and fear, I felt eerily calm. Although there have been some loosening of the restrictions of lockdown, we are undeniably still a species in crisis with no solution yet to the ravages of this virus, yet I felt this slowing down of my frantic energy and for the first time in a long time I could focus and concentrate. Instead of hectically working, gardening, cooking or cleaning, I sat at my workbench and made a bracelet for a very dear friend whose birthday is very soon after mine. And this is another anomaly. I am usually not at my best around the time of my birthday, as those who know me will attest! For some reason I have always found the looming of this particular anniversary strangely depressing and prefer to gloss over my ‘special day’ with the minimum of fanfare. Historically I have used my birthday as an occasion to get my measuring stick out and berate myself for not having achieved more in the year that has passed. These days I am grateful to just still be here, a lesson learned from watching close friends of mine survive cancer. So there I sat at my workbench selecting and threading beads onto a wire and feeling…..centred.
Whenever I find myself in this head space I make an effort to enjoy it while it last, conscious as I am that far from being the end of my struggles it is likely that I am in “the eye of the storm.” I have always been morbidly fascinated by destructive weather and have never shaken the feeling that it is our planets way of showing us how inconsequential we really are in the big scheme of things. When you see footage of a tornado you witness everything we humans hold dear being extinguished in seconds. And yet somewhere in the centre of that destructive whirlwind is the eye of the storm, a place that is eerily calm. The eye of a storm is defined as
“….a region of mostly calm weather at the centre of a strong tropical cyclone. It is a roughly circular area, characterised by light winds and clear skies surrounded by a ring of towering thunderstorms where the most severe weather and highest winds occur. The cyclones lowest atmospheric pressure occurs in the eye and can be as much as 15 percent lower than the pressure outside the storm….”
I find this intriguing. Right in the centre of all of this potentially destructive power is a place of calm weather and low pressure. Exactly how I feel right now. In my own yoga practice over the last week or two I felt drawn to working on core strength, because I find that feeling strong on the inside affects how I feel and how I interact with the world in a positive way. I am just about to be 52, so it is more important than ever to incorporate elements of strength training into my yoga as we lose muscle mass as we age, and for women particularly the hormonal shifts of menopause affect the integrity of the pelvic floor
The term “core strength” gets bandied about a lot and I am not sure what people mean when they use this phrase or how it is interpreted. Often it is used to describe the elusive abdominal six-pack that so many people covet, or is shouted out by an instructor at one of those classes that have the words “Attack Combat or Pump” in the title. The core actually refers to more than thirty different muscles that work in harmony to stabilise and control the pelvis and spine. Core strength is less about power and more about the subtleties of being able to maintain good posture and ease of movement. Signs of good core strength are the ability to get on and off the floor with ease, stand up from a chair without using your arms, sit comfortably at a desk without back ache, and to partake in your daily activities whether that be walking the dog, sitting for hours at a jigsaw puzzle, hoovering the stairs or digging the garden without pain. Yoga contains many movements that REQUIRE core strength but arguably not enough that PROMOTE core strength which is why it makes sense for the teacher to add in some moves from other disciplines in the warm up to help people find and engage their core. It is worth pointing out that trying to “hold your tummy in” all day, sometimes because of restrictive waist bands, sometimes because we are not happy with the shape of our midriff, does NOT create core strength, in fact it weakens some of the very muscles we need to strengthen. “Holding” the belly also prevents you from breathing fully and deeply, and at a time when we are at risk of catching a respiratory virus this is a particularly bad idea. Every so often stop what you are doing and take five full deep breaths in AND out as the lungs benefit hugely from being inflated and deflated as fully as possible as regularly as possible.
On a more esoteric note, the core is connected to the flow of our energy or life-force known as prana. In yoga the idea is that we are sustained not only by the air we breathe and the water and food we take in, but by a vital force that flows through us via a complex system of channels that we can think of as being akin to the circulatory system that carries nutrients to the body and collects waste from the body. The vessels that circulate prana are called Nadis, and at certain points on their journey these streams of energy cross. (And every time I say that I think of the film Ghostbusters “Don’t cross the streams!” Do you remember?) Where two lines of energy cross a vortex is created, you can think of this as a tornado or whirlpool. These tornadoes of energy are called the Chakras and there are many of these in the subtle body. Luckily for us there are only seven main chakras -think of these as being arranged through your body in a vertical stack: pelvic floor, sacrum, navel, heart, throat, centre of the eyebrows and crown of the head.
The core relates to the first three of these chakras
Muladhara (pronounced MOO-la DHA-ra) which we can visualise at the centre of the pelvic floor
Swadisthana (pronounced SVA-dis-THAN-a) which we can visualise at the sacrum
Manipura (pronounced MAN-ee-POO-ra) which we can think of as behind the navel.
Now what I find especially intriguing is that these three chakras are also associated with the elements earth, water and fire.
Muladhara is associated with Earth – the element of stability and nurture. It enables us to channel energy up from the earth through the feet and legs and into the spine and also acts as an ‘earth’ for negative energies, helping us to discharge toxic emotions back down through the feet and into the ground. It represents our physical and emotional grounding.
Swadistana is associated with Water – the element of adaptability. It allows us to create connection as well as cooling and calming the mind, giving us respite from negative thoughts. It helps us maintain a broader perspective and the ability to go with the flow.
Manipura Chakra is associated with Fire – the element of change and transformation. It enables us to tap into our personal power so that we can navigate our lives with strength and determination.
When I read through that list I can see immediately that during the changes brought about by the pandemic there have been times when I have felt horribly ungrounded, unable to go with the flow, and out of touch with my usual steely determination. And this may explain my sudden need to do more core work, maybe it’s not just because working from home has given me way too many opportunities to visit the fridge and my favourite jeans have been folded up and put in the bottom drawer, but because I could sense that it would help me to cope better. And it seems to be working.
So back to this ‘eerie calm’. I have been working my way through the changes and what they mean to me, my family and the wider family of my fellow humans and our planet. And it has been heavy stuff. There are huge lessons to learn for us as a species here and even bigger ones if we don’t take heed now and make some sweeping and lasting changes to the way we interact with each other and our planet. In order to evolve we must journey towards the exact places that we tend to shy away from, the painful places, the raw places, the places where we feel most exposed and vulnerable. We must allow ourselves to pass through all kinds of turmoil, in order to discover that our consciousness, the very root of who we are is unaffected by the disturbance. We can then sit in the eye of the storm observing all the chaos around us but remain calm centred and stable. Well I can DEFINITELY say I have passed through all kinds of turmoil over the last two months as my other BEING HUMAN posts reveal, and now I seem to have blundered my way into the eye of the storm, and have found my place of ‘perfect rest’ where I am no longer pushed or pulled by anything. And I am going to make the most of every second of it. I will leave you with these words by Donna Farhi, an awesome yoga teacher
“It is in this tethering of awareness to the unchanging core of our being that true security can be gained. We find that the only thing that is unchanging in this core of ourselves is the radiantly alive and constantly vibrating pulse of life. When we arrive in this place, we realise there is no centre and no periphery, that we are in fact infinite and limitless.” (from “Bringing Yoga to Life” p.21)
(with heartfelt thanks to LHW for teaching me to move through turmoil and to JJ for the much needed hug)
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